Unusual Transportation

 Admittedly initially because I don't have a car, I've always been a passionate advocate of active transport for getting to and from work, that being cycling, walking or scooting. 

Nowadays, despite being still technically illegal, many folk are using electric scooters as well these days, something I suspect more people will be taking up in the coming months, and then even more when they are finally legalised in the no too distant future, hopefully relieving the pressure on parking. 

However, I'm also an advocate of that transportation being safe, which I can hardly say about the old Raleigh Twenty until about a year ago one of my colleagues was using before just dumping it in the cycling shed. 

Deprived of its original seat, they had been using a bean bag roughly strapped to the rusting metal seat, which must surely have been a huge risk for nether region tetanus. The handlebars were so rusted they looked they could have snapped at any time, and the brakes and gears were note exactly in a fresh out of the box condition.

It was a wheeled death trap, basically.

Then when I was going home, I noticed someone going passed me in their pride and joy - an ancient Reliant Rialto 2 three wheeler that looked like all the back seats had been removed.

Don't go round corners too fast in that baby!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 26.09.21

"Classic" Car Rally

Before cricket yesterday, I took myself off down the park to have a look at the East Midlands Classic Car Rally. Now when I was a kid, "Classic Cars" were what I envisaged to be those boxy Bugsy Malone type cars with wind up handles and running boards and an animal on the bonnet.

Nowadays, thanks to the  passing of time, a Classic car can now be a design horror like a 1980s Austin Maestro Van den Plas in excrement brown. You'd have maybe taken such a car if it was a prize on 3-2-1 but you wouldn't want to buy one.

However, there were some beautiful MGs, E types and Triumph Spitfires. My stepfather had one of  the latter when I first knew him.

He drove us to Scotland  with me on the non-existent back seat  with my two gerbils.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 06.08.18

Old Cars on a Cold Day

As part of the rather disappointing Christmas Market - a lot of stalls pulled out on account of the weather apparently - East Midlands Classic Car Club turned up with some nice pretty cars to look at.

Now I am far from a petrolhead; I don't drive and I don't suppose I will ever learn now, it's my way of keeping the people of Britain safe. But I love the days of cars with character, cars with faces, just like you don't see any more.

These cars were also decidely of a non British-Leyland bent, the company designed to destroy the UK car industry by making some of the most appalling and ugly cars ever made. I think East Midlands Car Club have virtually all of the working Austin Allegros left, you see those at the summer festival. They were famously more aerodynamic when travelling backwards.

These beasts were much sportier; rally looking Escort mark 1s and Capris, the sort you used to see doing rallycross on Grandstand in 1982, the classic vehicle for "Kev and Sharon" green plastic strips at the top of the windscreen.

If you want to be super-stereotypical, perhaps even a pair of fluffy dice as well.

Soon, you might even see my stepfather's Peugeot 205 cabby there, his pride and joy!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 11.12.17

Vintage Rally Shenanigans

First up, what the hell is a shenanigan anyway? Sounds sort of Irish to me.

So, I had a really painful night, repeatedly awoken by these pretty sharp back spasms, and indeed they were still bothering me this morning. I rested up on bed all morning, and even then when I tried to go into town I was still having twinges, oh by jingo!

But the worst thing you can do with these sorts of conditions is to just lock yourself away in your bedroom. It's been a lovely day as well. So, I made sure I took pain killers, and rode into town, and to the library, and made sure I moved around. Eventually I was able to get about ok.

Just about.

So, later on I decided to have another potter, and got into town to see what appeared to be a stopover point for some kind of vintage car rally. Three small, shiny and extremely noisy little vintage sports cars, complete with older folk who looked pretty much like the sort of folk you'd expect to see driving such a car, were sat being admired by the townsfolk.

Two of them were GNs, which apparently is a "cyclecar" type light sports car from the 1910s-20s, powered by V twin cyclinder engines. Made in Hendon and Wandsworth, London, they were apparently very popular models at the time, although not if you lived next door to one, I fancy.

Not exactly milk floats in terms of noise level. But a lot of fun to drive, I'll wager.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 17.07.17

Classic Cars at the Park

It was a festival at Sconce Park today, rather easily named "Sconce Fest" for publicity purposes. I had no idea of this of course, I had just decided to head to the park for tea because my cricket match today was cancelled.

Disappointing, as I'd hoped to try and find a bit of bowling form after yesterday, and also to improve my batting against pace bowling. Instead I sat drinking tea, watching ninjas coming and going from their stall, and thought about how I can interest more folk at work to take an interest in what's around them. Ideally a community event like this one should have perhaps been something I'd have been able to alert them to.

However, I'm trying to get projects on cycling and the nature on the site going.

I also reflected on cricket and my own situation. My sister thinks it is good for me to be in a team environment from time to time and it certainly keeps my concentration on matters away from my tics, although a team-mate asked me yesterday "Do you have trouble with your nerves Si?"

It is obviously noticed by the cricket fraternity then.

When I finished my tea and my pondering, I had a wander around the site, where folk where demonstrating bowls on a long green carpet, ninja skills, and a miniature classic car rally was taking place. Lover as I am of retro things, if not necessarily cars in themselves, I found myself enjoying their deeply loved shininess and their charismatic emblems.

Ironic really, as I can't drive.

Si

Memories of my Grandfather's Wartburg

The weather has kept me inside most of the day, aside from a brief ten mile cycle blast late in the day, through a Coddington village rich in swooping swallows by the windmill, and stubby house martins - always reminding me of piebald flying fish - over the school in fair numbers.

But I have the need to write. Only question is; what about?

Salvation came in the unlikely form of "James May's Cars of the People". My eyes turned a somersault when I saw one of them, igniting a whole slew of memories from a very young age.

For my Grandfather, who died in 1976, had a Wartburg, a 50s issue one. My memory of it was exactly the same as the one shown in the programme, a red and white rasberry ripple of a car vaguely reminscent of one of those old Citroens that went up and down like a hovercraft. Just like this one.

Wartburg 311, courtesy of Torsten Maue, Wikimedia

How it ended up in South-West Scotland is anyone's guess. Apparently my grandfather bought it for £20 from a local garage in a part of the world where communist cars were unusually common; we had family friends with Ladas.

I was very very little, but my memory is trying to tell me one or two things, initially a Proustian memory surge caused by smell. I'm sure it smelt bad, of oil, petrol, chemical smells and cheap leather furnishings. It was also very very bumpy, I seem to remember always rolling around the back seat as it bunnyhopped its way over rough Scottish roads. This wasn't helped by my only signifiant memory of my grandfather is him getting into a low speed accident in it while I was messing about lying on the floor in the back.

Where we went in it, I have no idea. I have memories of chasing sheep as it was parked by the roadside, sheep that looked back at me with contempt as they ensured my terrifying 3 year old platinum  blond self could never get near them. Another time, we may have driven to Whithorn, where I was told  - rather dangerously - to look for Eagles around the rocky coast. Eagles! I doubt there were any within 150 miles.

Sergeant Howie was burnt in his Wickerman at Whithorn, by the way.

Grandfather died in, I think, 1976 walking home one night - his heart gave out. He'd had a colourful life pre-WW2, I've seen pictures of him in a Del Monte man outfit in Hong Kong and Singapore when he was a buyer for Templetons or some other Scottish store. After the war, he drove buses.

That is about as much as I know and remember...and all inspired by the long haired one from Top Gear, and a crummy East German pig of a car made from toxic waste cotton.